Re: Article on MySQL vs. Postgres - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

Tim Perdue wrote:

> On wednesday or thursday, I'm going to be publishing my article on MySQL
> vs. Postgres on PHPBuilder.com.
>
> Before I do that I want to confirm the major problem I had w/postgres:
> the 8K tuple limit. When trying to import some tables from MySQL,
> postgres kept choking because MySQL has no such limit on the size of a
> row in the database (text fields on MySQL can be multi-megabyte).

This is beeing fixed: http://www.postgresql.org/projects/devel-toast.html

>
>
> Is it even possible to import large text fields into postgres? If not,
> how in the world can anyone use this to store message board posts,
> resumes, etc? Do you have to use pgsql-specific large-object
> import/export commands?

I'm currently building a newspaper system and I just split the articles into
8K sections. This is just a workaround until the TOAST project is finished.

>
>
> I actually intended the article to be a win for Postgres, as I've used
> it and had good luck with it for such a long time, but if you look at
> the results below, it seems very positive for MySQL.
>
> Performace/Scalability:
>
> MySQL was About 50-60% faster in real-world web serving, but it crumbles
> under a real load. Postgres on the other hand scaled 3x higher than
> MySQL before it started to crumble on the same machine. Unfortunately,
> Postgres would probably still lose on a high-traffic website because
> MySQL can crank out the pages so much faster, number of concurrent
> connections is hard to compare. MySQL also seems to make better use of
> multiple-processor machines like the quad-xeon I tested on. Postgres
> never saturated all 4 processors as MySQL did.
>
> Tools:
> MySQL has some nice admin tools that allow you to watch individual
> connections and queries as they progress and tools to recover from
> corruption. I haven't seem any similar tools for postgres.

Have you looked at pgAdmin? http://www.pgadmin.freeserve.co.uk/
There is also a tool called pgAccess.

>
> Long-term stability:
> Postgres is undoubtably the long-run winner in stability, whereas MySQL
> will freak out or die when left running for more than a month at a time.
> But if you ever do have a problem with postgres, you generally have to
> nuke the database and recover from a backup, as there are no known tools
> to fix index and database corruption. For a long-running postgres
> database, you will occasionally have to drop indexes and re-create them,
> causing downtime.
>
> Usability:
> Both databases use a similar command-line interface. Postgres uses
> "slash commands" to help you view database structures. MySQL uses a more
> memorable, uniform syntax like "Show Tables; Show Databases; Describe
> table_x;" and has better support for altering/changing tables, columns,
> and even databases.
>
> Features:
> Postgres is undoubtedly far, far more advanced than MySQL is. Postgres
> now supports foreign keys, which can help with referential integrity.
> Postgres supports subselects and better support for creating tables as
> the result of queries. The "transaction" support that MySQL lacks is
> included in Postgres, although you'll never miss it on a website, unless
> you're building something for a bank, and if you're doing that, you'll
> use oracle.

Not true. Transactions are used to make atomic database operations. We use
transactions more than 60 times in our application (we use Cold Fusion).

>
>
> Tim
>
> --
> Founder - PHPBuilder.com / Geocrawler.com
> Lead Developer - SourceForge
> VA Linux Systems
> 408-542-5723

Poul L. Christiansen
Dynamic Paper